hello July 12, 2008

an update emailed to some friends:

helloooo people

i have been practically living at the hospital, more specifically, the NICU.  tomorrow is my first day off in 2 weeks, and i can’t believe how i’ve gone this long on 5 hrs or less of sleep per night.

my first call was scary since it was only day 3 of work, i had no senior resident or fellow with me, and it was the weekend so i also had to round on twice as many pts in the morning.  luckily the babies decided to spare me and there were only a couple of times i wanted to freak out, and only once that i paged the attending.

i pretty much live and breathe NICU at this point.  get up at 5, get to the hospital at 6, leave around 5 or 7 pm, take a short nap, eat dinner, check e-mail, and then start pre-noting or working on d/c summaries for the next day.  the good news is that after working 10 days straight, i’m feeling more comfortable (the first day of rounding was a disaster) and i’m finding myself worried that i actually sorta kinda maybe *like* the NICU.

also you know what’s weird?  walking out of the hospital post-call and having to actually think about where i parked my car the morning prior.

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and so it begins June 26, 2008

day 2 on the NICU and i *just* got home.  yes, that is a 13 hr day.  and yes, i still have work (prep for tomorrow) to do from home (not sure if computerized records is a + or – here).

the funny thing is, i quite like being in the hospital, and as crazy as today was, it’s not like i didn’t like what i was doing  (checking on kiddos, ordering meds, calling consultants, discharging pts, answering nurses’ questions…).   i just hate being so inefficient.  hopefully i’ll get the swing of things soon so that i can have a lot more fun on this rotation.

ps  being able to write orders without needing someone to cosign is awesome

pps i still need to get used to being called “dr”